Rabu, 31 Agustus 2011

Tanda-tanda Kiamat dari berbagai Agama











Kiamat biasanya merujuk kepada tulisan eskatologis dalam ketiga agama
Abrahamik: Yudaisme, Kristen, dan Islam. Akhir zaman seringkali
digambarkan sebagai suatu masa yang diwarnai oleh kesusahan yang
mendahului kedatangan kembali dari Mesias yang telah diramalkan. Mesias
adalah tokoh yang akan mengantarkan datangnya Kerajaan Allah dan
mengakhiri penderitaan dan kejahatan. Namun demikian, gambaran-gambaran
terinci tentang kejadian ini tergantung pada keyakinan masing-masing
yang dipelajari. Sejumlah agama dan tradisi memiliki keyakinan-keyakinan
tentang akhir zaman, yang menghasilkan beraneka sistem keyakinan,
tradisi, dan perilaku:





1. Yudaisme




Akhir Zaman dalam eskatologi Yahudi meliputi sejumlah tema yang saling terkait:





* Mesianisme Yahudi



- Pengumpulan kembali orang-orang yang hidup di pembuangan;



- Pembangunan kembali Bait Suci;



- Kurban binatang atau Korba.





* Dunia yang Akan Datang (Olam ha-Ba)



sebuah istilah yang ambigu yang mungkin merujuk kepada kehidupan
setelah kematian, dunia mesianik, atau kehidupan setelah kebangkitan.





2. Talmud




Menurut tradisi Yahudi, mereka yang hidup pada akhir zaman akan menyaksikan:





1. Dikumpulkannya orang-orang Yahudi di pembuangan ke Israel yang ada secara geografis;



2. Dikalahkannya semua musuh Israel;



3. Pembangunan (atau penempatan oleh Allah) kenisah di Yerusalem dan
dipulihkannya kembali persembahan kurban dan ibadah di Kenisah;



4. Kebangkitan orang mati (techiat hameitim), atau Kebangkitan;



5. Pada suatu saat, Mesias Yahudi akan menjadi Raja Israel. Ia akan
memisah-misahkan orang-orang Yahudi di Israel menurut bagian-bagian
wilayah sukunya yang asli di negeri Israel. Pada masa ini, Gog, raja
Magog, akan menyerang Israel. Siapa Gog dan negara Magog itu tidak
diketahui. Magog akan bertempur dalam suatu pertempuran hebat, yang
mengakibatkan jauh korban yang besar di kedua belah pihak, tetapi Allah
akan ikut campur dan menyelamatkan orang-orang Yahudi. Ini adalah
pertempuran yang dirujuk sebagai Harmagedon. Setelah memusnahkan
musuh-musuh terakhir ini untuk selama-lamanya, Allah akan mengenyahkan
semua kejahatan dari keberadaan manusia. Setelah tahun 6000 (dalam
kalender Yahudi), milenium ketujuh adalah masa kesucian, ketenangan,
kehidupan rohani, dan perdamaian di seluruh dunia, yang disebut sebagai
Olam Haba (Dunia Masa Depan), di mana semua orang akan mengenal Allah
secara langsung.





3. Kristen




Menurut Perjanjian Baru:





Dalam Perjanjian Baru, Yesus merujuk kepadanya sebagai 'Penderitaan Besar', 'Penyiksaan', dan 'hari-hari pembalasan'.





Matius 24:15-22: “Jadi apabila kamu melihat Pembinasa keji berdiri di
tempat kudus, menurut firman yang disampaikan oleh nabi Daniel — para
pembaca hendaklah memperhatikannya — maka orang-orang yang di Yudea
haruslah melarikan diri ke pegunungan. Orang yang sedang di peranginan
di atas rumah janganlah ia turun untuk mengambil barang-barang dari
rumahnya, dan orang yang sedang di ladang janganlah ia kembali untuk
mengambil pakaiannya. Celakalah ibu-ibu yang sedang hamil atau yang
menyusukan bayi pada masa itu. Berdoalah, supaya waktu kamu melarikan
diri itu jangan jatuh pada musim dingin dan jangan pada hari Sabat.
Sebab pada masa itu akan terjadi siksaan yang dahsyat seperti yang belum
pernah terjadi sejak awal dunia sampai sekarang dan yang tidak akan
terjadi lagi. Dan sekiranya waktunya tidak dipersingkat, maka dari
segala yang hidup tidak akan ada yang selamat; akan tetapi oleh karena
orang-orang pilihan waktu itu akan dipersingkat."





Markus 13:14-20: “Apabila kamu melihat Pembinasa keji berdiri di tempat
yang tidak sepatutnya — para pembaca hendaklah memperhatikannya — maka
orang-orang yang di Yudea haruslah melarikan diri ke pegunungan. Orang
yang sedang di peranginan di atas rumah janganlah ia turun dan masuk
untuk mengambil sesuatu dari rumahnya, dan orang yang sedang di ladang
janganlah ia kembali untuk mengambil pakaiannya. Celakalah ibu-ibu yang
sedang hamil atau yang menyusukan bayi pada masa itu. Berdoalah, supaya
semuanya itu jangan terjadi pada musim dingin. Sebab pada masa itu akan
terjadi siksaan seperti yang belum pernah terjadi sejak awal dunia, yang
diciptakan Allah, sampai sekarang dan yang tidak akan terjadi lagi. Dan
sekiranya Tuhan tidak mempersingkat waktunya, maka dari segala yang
hidup tidak akan ada yang selamat; akan tetapi oleh karena orang-orang
pilihan yang telah dipilih-Nya, Tuhan mempersingkat waktunya."





Source : Kakskus


Selasa, 30 Agustus 2011

Abu Bakr’s Succession













Abu Bakr soon confronted two new threats: the secession of man of the tribes that had joined the
ummah after 630 and
the appearance among them of other prophet figures
who claimed continuing guidance from God. In withdrawing, the tribes appear to have been able to
distinguish
loyalty to Muhammad from full acceptance
of the uniqueness
and permanence of his message. The
appearance of
other prophets illustrates a general
phenomenon in the
history of religion: the volatility of
revelation as a source
of authority. When successfully claimed,
it has almost no
competitor; once opened, it is difficult
to close; and, if it
cannot be contained and focused at the
appropriate
moment, its power disperses. Jews and
Christians had
responded to
this dilemma in their own ways; now it was
the turn of the
Muslims, whose future was dramatically
affected by Abu Bakr’s response. He
put an end to revelation
with a combination of military force
and coherent
rhetoric. He
defined withdrawal from Muhammad’s coalition
as ingratitude
to or denial of God (the concept of
kufr. Thus he gave secession (riddah) cosmic
significance as an
act of apostasy punishable, according to God’s
revealed
messages to
Muhammad, by death. He declared that the
secessionists had become Muslims, and
thus servants of
God, by joining
Muhammad. They were not free not to be
Muslims, nor could they be Muslims,
and thus loyal to
God, under any
leader whose legitimacy did not derive
from Muhammad. Finally, he declared
Muhammad to be
the last prophet
God would send, relying on a reference to
Muhammad in one of the revealed
messages as
khatm alanbiya’ (“seal of the
prophets”). In his ability to interpret
the events of his reign from the
perspective of Islam, Abu
Bakr demonstrated the power of the
new conceptual
vocabulary
Muhammad had introduced.





Had Abu Bakr not asserted the
independence and
uniqueness of
Islam, the movement he had inherited could
have been
splintered or absorbed by other monotheistic
communities or
by new Islam-like movements led by other
tribal figures. Moreover, had he not
quickly made the ban
on secession and intergroup conflict yield material
success,
his chances for
survival would have been very slim, because
Arabia’s
resources could not support his state. To provide
an adequate
fiscal base, Abu Bakr enlarged impulses present
in pre-Islamic
Mecca and in the
ummah. At his death he was beginning
to turn his followers to raiding non-
Muslims in the only direction where
that was possible, the
north. Migration into Syria and Iraq already had a
long
history; Arabs,
both migratory and settled, were already
  present there. Indeed, some of them were already launching raids
when ‘Umar I, Abu Bakr’s acknowledged
successor, assumed the caliphate in
634. The ability of the
Medinan state to absorb random action into a
relatively
centralized
movement of expansion testifies to the strength
of the new
ideological and administrative patterns inherent
in the concept
of
ummah.





The fusion of two once separable
phenomena, membership
in Muhammad’s community and faith in Islam—the mundane and the
spiritual—would become one of Islam’s
most distinctive features. Becoming
and being Muslim
always involved
doing more than it involved believing.
On balance, Muslims have always
favoured orthopraxy
(correctness of practice) over orthodoxy (correctness
of
doctrine). Being
Muslim has always meant making a commitment
to a set of
behavioral patterns because they
reflect the right orientation to God.
Where choices were
later posed, they were posed not in terms of religion
and
politics, or
church and state, but between living in the
world the right
way or the wrong way. Just as classical
Islamicate languages developed no
equivalents for the
words religion and politics, modern European languages have developed
no adequate terms to capture the choices
as Muslims have posed them.





Riddah





The riddah wars, or wars of apostasy, were a
series of politicoreligious
uprisings in various parts of Arabia
in about 632 CE
during the
caliphate of Abu Bakr.
In spite of the traditional resistance of the Bedouins
to
any restraining
central authority, by 631 Muhammad was able
to exact from
the majority of their tribes at least nominal
adherence to
Islam, payment of the
zakat, a tax levied on Muslims to
support the poor, and acceptance of Medinan
envoys. In March
632, in what Muslim historians later called
the first
apostasy, or
riddah, a Yemeni tribe
expelled two
of Muhammad’s
agents and secured control of Yemen.
Muhammad died three months later, and
dissident tribes,
eager to
reassert their independence and stop payment of the
zakat, rose in
revolt. They refused to recognize the authority of
Abu Bakr,
interpreting Muhammad’s death as a termination
of their
contract, and rallied instead around at least four rival
prophets.





Most of Abu Bakr’s reign was consequently occupied with riddah wars, which
under the generalship of Khalid ibn al-
Walid not only brought the
secessionists back to Islam but
also won over many who had not yet
been converted. The
major campaign was directed against Abu Bakr’s
strongest
opponent, the
prophet Musaylimah and his followers in
Al-Yamamah. It culminated in a
notoriously bloody battle at
‘Aqraba’ in eastern Najd (May 633),
afterward known as the
Garden of Death. The encounter cost the Muslims the
lives of
many ansar (“helpers”;
Medinan Companions of the Prophet)
who were invaluable for their
knowledge of the Qur’an, which
had been revealed to the Prophet,
recited to his disciples, and
memorized by them but not yet written
down. Musaylimah
was killed, the
heart of the
riddah opposition was
destroyed,
and the strength
of the Medinan government was established.
Sometime between
633 and 634 Arabia was finally reunited under
the caliph, and
the energy of its tribes was diverted to the conquest
of Iraq, Syria,
and Egypt.





Islamic history / edited by Laura S.
Etheredge
. Britannica Educational Publishing


(a
trademark of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)
: New York.





Senin, 29 Agustus 2011

Islam at Muhammad’s Death












Muhammad’s continuing success gradually impinged on the Quraysh in Mecca. Some defected and
joined his
community. His
marriage to a Quraysh woman provided
him with a useful go-between. In 628
he and his followers
tried to make an Islamized hajj but were forestalled by the Meccans. At
Al-Hudaybiyah, outside Mecca, Muhammad
granted a 10-year truce on the
condition that the Meccans
would allow a Muslim pilgrimage the
next year. Even at
this point, however, Muhammad’s control over his
followers
had its limits;
his more zealous followers agreed to the
pact only after much persuasion. As
in all instances of
charismatic leadership, persisting loyalty was
correlated
with continuing
success. In the next year the Meccans
allowed a Muslim hajj; and in the
next year, 630, the
Muslims occupied Mecca without a struggle. Muhammad began to receive
deputations from many parts of Arabia.
By his death in 632 he was ruler of
virtually all of it.





The Meccan Quraysh were allowed to
become Muslims
without shame.
In fact, they quickly became assimilated
to the actual muhajirun, even though
they had not emigrated
to Medina themselves. Ironically, in defeat they had accomplished
much more than they would have had they
achieved victory: the centralization
of all of Arabia around
their polity and their shrine, the Ka‘bah, which had
been
emptied of its
idols to be filled with an infinitely greater
invisible power.





Because intergroup conflict was
banned to all members
of the ummah on the basis of their shared loyalty to the emissary of a
single higher authority, the limitations of
the Meccan
concept of
haram, according to
which the city
quarterly became
a safe haven, could be overcome. The
broader solidarity that Muhammad had
begun to build
was stabilized
only after his death, and this was achieved,
paradoxically,
by some of the same people who had initially
opposed him. In
the next two years one of his most significant
legacies became
apparent: the willingness and ability
of his closest supporters to sustain
the ideal and the reality
of one Muslim community under one
leader, even in the
face of significant opposition. When Muhammad died,
two
vital sources of
his authority ended—ongoing revelation
and his unique ability to exemplify
his messages on a daily
basis. A leader capable of keeping revelation alive
might
have had the
best chance of inheriting his movement, but
no Muslim
claimed messengership, nor had Muhammad
unequivocally designated any other
type of successor. The
ansar, his early supporters in Medina, moved to elect their own leader,
leaving the
muhajirun to choose
theirs, but a
small number of muhajirun managed to
impose one of
their own over
the whole. That man was Abu Bakr, one
of Muhammad’s earliest followers and
the father of his
favourite wife,
‘A’ishah. The title Abu Bakr took,
khalifah (caliph), meaning deputy or
successor, echoed revealed
references to those who assist major
leaders and even God
himself. To khalifah he appended rasul Allah, so that his authority was based on his assistance
to Muhammad as
messenger of
God.







Islamic history / edited by Laura S.
Etheredge
. Britannica Educational Publishing


(a
trademark of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)
: New York.



Minggu, 28 Agustus 2011

The Prophet Muhammad: Muhammad’s Emigration to Yathrib (Medina)










Like Mecca, Yathrib was experiencing demographic problems: several tribal groups coexisted,
descendants of its
Arab Jewish founders as well as a number
of pagan Arab
immigrants divided into two tribes, the
Aws and the
Khazraj. Unable
to resolve their conflicts, the Yathribis
invited Muhammad to perform the
well-established role
of neutral outside arbiter (hakam). In September 622, having
discreetly sent his followers ahead, he and one
companion, Abu
Bakr, completed the community’s second
and final emigration, barely avoiding
Quraysh attempts to
prevent his departure by force. By the time of the
emigration,
a new label had
begun to appear in Muhammad’s
recitations to describe his
followers: in addition to being
described in terms of their
faithfulness (
iman) to God and his messenger,
they were also described in terms of their
undivided
attention—that is, as
muslims, individuals who assumed the
right relationship to God by surrendering
(islam) to his will. Although the
designation
muslim, derived from islam, eventually
became a proper name for a specific
historical community, at this point
it appears to have
expressed commonality with other monotheists. Like the others, muslims faced
Jerusalem to pray; Muhammad was
believed to have been transported
from Jerusalem to the
heavens to talk with God; and Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, and
Jesus, as well as Muhammad, all were considered
to be prophets (nabis) and
messengers of the same
God. In Yathrib, however, conflicts between other
monotheists
and the muslims sharpened
their distinctiveness.





The Forging of Muhammad’s Community





As an autonomous
community,
muslims
might have become
a tribal unit like those with whom they
had affiliated, especially
because
the terms of their immigration gave them
no
special status. Yet under Muhammad’s leadership they
developed
a social organization that could absorb or challenge
everyone
around them. They became Muhammad’s
ummah
(“community”)
because they had recognized and
supported
God’s emissary (
rasul Allah). The ummah’s members differed from one another not by wealth or genealogical
superiority but by the degree of their faith
and piety, and
membership in the community was itself an
expression of faith. Anyone could join,
regardless of origin,
by following Muhammad’s lead, and the nature of
members’
support could
vary. In the concept of
ummah , Muhammad supplied the missing ingredient in
the Meccan system: a
powerful abstract principle for defi ning, justifying,
and
stimulating
membership in a single community.





Muhammad made the concept of ummah work by expanding his
role as arbiter so as to become the sole
spokesman for all residents of
Yathrib, hereafter called
Medina. Even though the agreement
under which
Muhammad had
emigrated did not obligate non-Muslims
to follow him except in his
arbitration, they necessarily
became involved in the fortunes of
his community. By
protecting him
from his Meccan enemies, the residents of
Medina identified with his fate.
Those who supported him
as Muslims received special designations: the Medinans were called ansar (“helpers”), and
his fellow emigrants were
distinguished as muhajirun (“emigrants”).
He was often
able to use
revelation to arbitrate.





Because the terms of his emigration did
not provide
adequate
financial support, he began to provide for his
community
through caravan raiding, a tactic familiar to
tribal Arabs. By
thus inviting hostility, he required all
the Medinans to take sides. Initial
failure was followed by
success, first at Nakhlah, where the Muslims defied Meccan custom by
violating one of the truce months so
essential to Meccan prosperity and
prestige. Their most
memorable victory occurred in 624 at Badr, against a large Meccan
force; they continued to succeed, with only
one serious
setback, at Uhud in 625. From that time on,
“conversion” to
Islam involved joining an established
polity, the successes of which were
tied to its proper spiritual
orientation, regardless of whether
the convert shared that
orientation completely. During the early years in
Medina a
major motif of
Islamic history emerged: the connection
between material success and divine
favour, which had
also been
prominent in the history of the Israelites.





The Ummah’s Allies and Enemies





During these years,
Muhammad used his outstanding
knowledge
of tribal relations to act as a great tribal leader,
or
sheikh, further expanding his authority beyond the role
that
the Medinans had given him. He developed a network
of alliances
between his
ummah and neighbouring
tribes,
and so competed
with the Meccans at their own game. He
managed and distributed the booty
from raiding, keeping
one-fifth for the ummah’s overall needs and distributing the rest among
its members. In return, members gave a
portion of their wealth as zakat, a tax paid to
help the needy
and to
demonstrate their awareness of their dependence
on God for all
of their material benefits. Like other sheikhs,
Muhammad
contracted numerous, often strategically
motivated, marriage alliances. He was
also more able to
harass and
discipline Medinans, Muslim and non-Muslim
alike, who did
not support his activities fully. He agitated
in particular
against the Jews, one of whose clans, the Banu
Qaynuqa‘, he
expelled.





Increasingly estranged from
nonresponsive Jews and
Christians, he reoriented his followers’ direction of
prayer
from Jerusalem
to Mecca. He formally instituted the
hajj to Mecca and fasting during the month
of Ramadan as
distinctive
cultic acts, in recognition of the fact that
islam, a generic act of
surrender to God, had become Islam, a
proper-name identity distinguished
not only from paganism
but from other forms of monotheism as well. As more and more of
Medina was absorbed into the Muslim
community and as the Meccans
weakened, Muhammad’s
authority expanded. He continued to lead a
three-pronged
campaign—against
nonsupporters in Medina, against the
Quraysh in Mecca, and against
surrounding tribes—and
he even ordered raids into southern Syria. Eventually Muhammad became
powerful enough to punish nonsupporters
severely, especially those who leaned
toward
Mecca. For
example, he had the men of the Qurayzah clan
of Jews in
Medina executed after they failed to help him
against the
Meccan forces at the Battle of the Ditch in
627. But he also
used force and diplomacy to bring in other
Jewish and
Christian groups. Because they were seen,
unlike pagans, to have formed ummahs of their own
around
a revelation
from God, Jews and Christians were entitled
to pay for
protection (
dhimmah). Muhammad thus
set a
precedent for
another major characteristic of Islamicate
civilization,
that of qualified religious pluralism under
Muslim
authority.





Muhammad’s Later Recitations





During these years of
warfare and consolidation,
Muhammad
continued to transmit revealed recitations,
though
their nature began to change. Some commented
on Muhammad’s
situation, consoled and encouraged his
community, explained the continuing
resistance of the
Meccans, and
urged appropriate responses. Some told
stories about figures familiar to
Jews and Christians but
cast in an Islamic framework. Though still delivered
in
the form of
God’s direct speech, the messages became
longer and less ecstatic, less urgent
in their warnings if
more earnest in their guidance. Eventually they
focused
on interpersonal
regulations in areas of particular importance
for a new
community, such as sexuality, marriage,
divorce, and inheritance. By this
time certain Muslims had
begun to write down what Muhammad
uttered or to recite
passages for worship (salat) and private devotion. The recited word, so
important among the Arab tribes, had
found a greatly enlarged
significance. A competitor for
Muhammad’s status as God’s messenger
even declared
himself among a
nonmember tribe; he was Musaylimah
of Yamamah, who claimed to convey
revelations from
God. He managed
to attract numerous Bedouin Arabs
but failed to speak as successfully
as Muhammad to the
various available constituencies.





Activism in the name of God, both
nonmilitary as well
as military, would become a permanent strand in Muslim piety. Given the
environment in which Muhammad
operated, his ummah was unlikely to
survive without it; to
compete as leader of a community, he needed to exhibit military
prowess. (Like most successful leaders, however,
Muhammad was a
moderate and a compromiser; some of
his followers were more militant and
aggressive than he,
and some were less so.) In addition, circumstantial
necessity
had ideological
ramifications. Because Muhammad as
messenger was also, by divine
providence, leader of an
established community, he could
easily define the whole
realm of social action as an expression of faith.
Thus,
Muslims were
able to identify messengership with worldly
leadership to an
extent almost unparalleled in the history
of religion. There had been activist
prophets before
Muhammad and
there were activist prophets after him,
but in no other religious tradition
does the image of the
activist prophet, and by extension the activist
follower,
have such a
comprehensive and coherent justification in
the formative
period.





Islamic history / edited by Laura S.
Etheredge
. Britannica Educational Publishing


(a
trademark of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)
: New York.